Wills for couples with no children

Many married couples believe that if one of them dies, everything automatically passes to the surviving spouse. Without a will, this is only guaranteed if the estate is below a fixed statutory legacy amount, currently set out in the intestacy rules; where children are involved, that changes it further. Even without children, if the deceased has surviving parents, the estate can be split between the spouse and those parents once it exceeds the fixed sum.

This means, contrary to popular belief, that a surviving spouse in a childless marriage does not always inherit the whole estate under intestacy, and could find themselves negotiating a shared inheritance with in-laws at the worst possible time. A will avoids this entirely by letting you leave everything to each other directly if that is what you want.

If you are living together but not married or in a civil partnership, your partner has no legal right to inherit anything from you under the intestacy rules, no matter how long you have been together, whether you own a home jointly, or how financially intertwined your lives are. This is a common and serious misunderstanding; there is no such thing as 'common law marriage' in English and Welsh law.

For unmarried couples without children, a will is not a nice-to-have, it is the only mechanism available to make sure your partner inherits anything from you at all. See our guide on cohabiting couples' wills for more on this specific situation.

For most couples without children, a will is often simpler than for parents, since there is no need to think about guardianship. The core decisions are usually: leaving the estate to each other, deciding who inherits if you both die together or your partner dies before you, whether to leave anything to siblings, nieces, nephews, friends or charities, and who to appoint as executor.

It is worth being deliberate about the 'if we both die' scenario rather than leaving it unaddressed, since without children as an obvious next generation, your true wishes about wider family, friends or charitable giving deserve equal thought to the primary gift to your partner.

Many couples without children choose mirror wills, near-identical wills that each leave the estate to the other, and then to the same set of beneficiaries if both die. This works particularly well where both partners broadly agree on who should ultimately benefit, whether that is siblings, nieces and nephews, friends, or charities.

Mirror wills are not joined into a single document; each partner has their own valid will, and either partner can change theirs independently later. If you want to prevent that, a mutual wills agreement is a more restrictive and legally complex option best discussed with a solicitor.

Without children as automatic next beneficiaries, many couples use this as an opportunity to think more broadly about who or what matters to them, nieces and nephews, godchildren, close friends, or charities connected to causes they care about. There is no rule requiring you to leave anything to blood relatives, and being deliberate about these choices, rather than defaulting to whatever the intestacy rules would produce, is one of the real advantages of making a will.

If you want to leave a gift to charity, name it precisely, including its registered charity number, and consider whether a fixed sum or a percentage share of the estate residue suits your circumstances better. See our guide on leaving money to charity for more detail.